Questions about KRAY!

[jaxtone]

The text below is copyed from the Lightwave forum and I have a few questions about these:

"kray vs lw - faster, cleaner, better render for archiviz, instancing with kray is great, not as flexible as hdinstance but its free with kray. And kray actually uses hdi data to render if you have it, too. Not sure if the offset animation works I haven't tried."
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread ... light=KRAY

1. Is it only when I create all copies/instances in KRAY I will be able to take part of KRAY´s increased render speed? I thought KRAY would add it´s render speed to any item that is created as an instance in LW!

"kray vs modo - kray slightly faster. but modos bucket renderer is superior and I rendered 6000x6000 saving bucket in hardrive with the 302 demo. The poly limit for modo is higher than kray or even max vray. Was really impressed with modo with pure render power. kray is limited to what lw can render poly wise except for the instance cheat." http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread ... light=KRAY

[b2. ]Unfortunally I have experienced that LW´s point and poly limits my choices of working with bid 3D models. I recently bought a 3D model of N.Y. that was impossible to open or handle in LW, (it had a massive amount of textured images connected to the models as well). This model however was mentioned to open without any problems in 3DMAX, MAYA and loads of other applications but not in my favourite 3D-software Lightwave. The text above describes KRAY is dependent of Lightwaves limitations and leads to my second question since I am a rookie in KRAY´s possibilities. Is the limitation in Lightwave dripping over to KRAY´s render options?[/b]

"Current issue is not all lw stuff works even basic ones for example you can't exclude an object from a lightsource. I haven't tried the typical unseen by camera, only cast shadow if they work since I primary use kray for bg shots so only single passes. There's some other you will encounter. pixel filters,etc don't work. I think nodes are not completely supported especially third party nodes." http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread ... light=KRAY

3. How do you experience that the text above describes limitations in excluding Light sources from activity on certain objects? Is this a down peak or are there other ways to compensate this?

"Gi is getting easier, the presets are good starting points. Its getting to be the same attributes to lw unlike before where you setup a scene in lw it looks totally different kray. Now predictibility with material and lighting setup is similar for kray if you're used to lw. But reflections, transparency are still different in kray.
Haven't encountered that AA issue. I use high setting its still fast to render and really cleaner than lw." http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread ... light=KRAY

4. This part of the text make me think that no surfaces or textures shall be added in Lightwave at all. Have I misunderstood this or is it actually so that all texturing shall be done in KRAY to get the best result? (I thought that KRAY mainly was a render horse!

5. Shall all light sources be created in KRAY only and all native light sources in LW be excluded?

6. I also wonder if KRAY works fine with Sasquatch?

7. Finally, is KRAY always faster than LW in all render situations or are there render options where KRAY actually are slower than LW´s own render engine?

[acidarrow]

1. Is it only when I create all copies/instances in KRAY I will be able to take part of KRAY´s increased render speed? I thought KRAY would add it´s render speed to any item that is created as an instance in LW!

No. Instances are just another bonus. Keep in mind that Kray's strong point is doing GI with a lot of bounces very fast with superior results. If you render scenes that only need a couple of bounces (like exteriors) the rendertimes will be the same as LW or longer. But then again I find myself using Kray for exteriors so I can take advantage of instancing and some other features.

2.Unfortunally I have experienced that LW´s point and poly limits my choices of working with bid 3D models. I recently bought a 3D model of N.Y. that was impossible to open or handle in LW, (it had a massive amount of textured images connected to the models as well). This model however was mentioned to open without any problems in 3DMAX, MAYA and loads of other applications but not in my favourite 3D-software Lightwave. The text above describes KRAY is dependent of Lightwaves limitations and leads to my second question since I am a rookie in KRAY´s possibilities. Is the limitation in Lightwave dripping over to KRAY´s render options?

Since Kray is a Lightwave plugin, if lightwave can't open the scene, you won't be able to render it. Remember Kray is only a renderer.

3. How do you experience that the text above describes limitations in excluding Light sources from activity on certain objects? Is this a down peak or are there other ways to compensate this?

I'm not sure what you mean...? Excluding lights I think is not possible right now. But you have options to tweak the lighting a lot with Kray's custom shader and control light bounce multiplier, saturation to control color bleeding etc. If what you want is some sort of light-linking, you can't really do it with Kray. (Disclaimer my Kray knowledge is kinda dusty lately, someone else might want to chime in on this).

4. This part of the text make me think that no surfaces or textures shall be added in Lightwave at all. Have I misunderstood this or is it actually so that all texturing shall be done in KRAY to get the best result? (I thought that KRAY mainly was a render horse!

Kray is only a renderer and it uses Lightwave's material editor for materials. What the text you quoted meant was because of incompatibilities and incocistencies between how Kray handled LWs materials and how LW-renderer handled the materials, you sometimes had to tweak your materials a bit. Most of them are fixed by now. But still if you open an old LW scene and rendered it with Kray you might have to tweak the materials a bit (for example since kray uses a lot of bounces, you might have to bring diffuse down a bit).

5. Shall all light sources be created in KRAY only and all native light sources in LW be excluded?

Again, Kray is just a renderer and it uses LW lights. You can also use lumi-polygons as lights as an added bonus

6. I also wonder if KRAY works fine with Sasquatch?

I don't think it does (since it's a post plugin). Same goes for LW native hair/fur (for now?). But nothing is stopping you from doing some compositing afterwards.

7. Finally, is KRAY always faster than LW in all render situations or are there render options where KRAY actually are slower than LW´s own render engine?

Well, as I said if what you need is a simple exterior with a couple of bounces only, LW's native renderer will be faster. In demanding GI scenes Kray will be much faster and nicer looking.

[geo_n]

Hello jaxtone. i see you at jimmyrigger forum as well.

You quoted my post so I can explain more my opinion.

1. kray has its own instancing method. Like any geometry added in a scene in any program, it will add calculation time. Example doing 100000 pots in vray instance/real geometry, it will calculate gi so 1000 pots is faster than 100000 pots.
Btw I was wrong about hdinstance. kray can see them but not render them with gi. Its only raytraced I think. Hopefully that will be fixed before Core comes out.

2. lw limitation so kray limitation. Hopefull kray will support Core asap but no news whatsover yet.

3. If you are doing a lot of compositing then that would be a problem using kray. Exclude object from light, exclude from camera, exclude from reflection, etc. Kray doesn't handle them well yet. But the next builds will probably fix that. But if you're doing single passes no problem. Kray is fast.

4. Afaik reflections and transparency sill look different. I still have a separate kray surface library besides lw surfaces. Understandable since kray is another renderer. Its better than in max where I currently have a problem dealing with an outsourced job that they did in finalrender(characters) and we're doing it in vray and some freelance guy is using scanline for the city we asked him to build. They are all incompatible!! I had to convert all to vray lights and to vray material to look right.

5. lights same as number 4. don't expect them to look exactly the same with lw. Different settings.

6. no pixelfilter support.

7. kray is faster in rendering background objects or single pass renders if its gi intensive.

[jaxtone]

Thanks for answering my rookie questions geo_n and AcidArrow!

P.S. JimmyRigger has not come up with any new builds for a while now. That´s so sad since they have increased the value of JR each time. I am waiting for more improvements in JR.

[geo_n]

Thanks for answering my rookie questions geo_n and AcidArrow!

P.S. JimmyRigger has not come up with any new builds for a while now. That´s so sad since they have increased the value of JR each time. I am waiting for more improvements in JR.

If you get kray read up on my compiled kray tips. Probably won't make sense until you have kray but they're tips from masters like johny and jure.

ps. JR has paid for itself with a project I did. Money well spent. I'm thinking of getting the pro version.

[jaxtone]

If you get kray read up on my compiled kray tips. Probably won't make sense until you have kray but they're tips from masters like johny and jure.
ps. JR has paid for itself with a project I did. Money well spent. I'm thinking of getting the pro version.

Thanks for the doc file. I will read it carefully. Can I ask you one thing more, it might be a silly question but I just have to ask it.

When looking at the Kray gallery there are many great looking renders. But not many of them have any information of how slow/fast the images where rendered...

http://www.kraytracing.com/image.php?di ... ntrast.jpg
http://www.kraytracing.com/image.php?di ... racing.jpg

Since I hate slow render processes no matter what I wonder of you or someone in here knows where to find some better infomation about render times in KRAY?

[geo_n]

In my experience so far gi intense scenes are atleast twice as fast as native lw and quality of AA and lighting is twice as clean. Johny can probably tweak it to 3 times as fast as 10 times better quality than lw.
Renders that would take me 2 hours in lw for a 1600x1200 interior would take kray 40min-1hr and again it looks cleaner better gi.
For exteriors lw is pretty fast already since you don't need very intense gi calculation. The big difference for kray is the instancing that is very very useful in exteriors. Lw doesn't have instancing and polycount in layout is sensitive issue so for people who need instancing kray has it built in.
I like kray, it feels so light to use. I really hope more features are supported and more bugs are fixed for compositing though. That's one thing missing to be on a competitive level with vray for animations.

[jure]

And that's just the beginning. Once we start working on Kray 3.0 things will improve much more also!

[geo_n]

Hi jure, any info you can say about kray 3? will it be for lw core only? I have no plans yet to get into core and I think majority will use lw 9.6 for a long time so kray 3 will be great if it supports 9.6 and core.
Really render management in lw sucks. In other software its easy to get render pass similar to Janus renderpassmanagament. Pick object click render matt hold, reflection, etc. It creates automatic like janus. I hope kray has this now because vray,mray,finalrender can do it. I know dpont nodes can do renderpasses but its not so simple for me. I like plugin that make life easier- vray, fumefx, rayfire, etc.
Imho kray needs more marketting also. I know so many lw users in japan and so far they don't use kray. Lack of demo, lack of stronger brand marketting. This is where chaos group is very good. CGworld japan always mention vray. Vlado is very rich man now I think

[jure]

Hi jure, any info you can say about kray 3? will it be for lw core only? I have no plans yet to get into core and I think majority will use lw 9.6 for a long time so kray 3 will be great if it supports 9.6 and core.
Really render management in lw sucks. In other software its easy to get render pass similar to Janus renderpassmanagament. Pick object click render matt hold, reflection, etc. It creates automatic like janus. I hope kray has this now because vray,mray,finalrender can do it. I know dpont nodes can do renderpasses but its not so simple for me. I like plugin that make life easier- vray, fumefx, rayfire, etc.
Imho kray needs more marketting also. I know so many lw users in japan and so far they don't use kray. Lack of demo, lack of stronger brand marketting. This is where chaos group is very good. CGworld japan always mention vray. Vlado is very rich man now I think

Old LW will definitely stay supported at least untill CORE replaces it in all aspects. About renderpasses: please post your ideas to feature request forum. This is the best thing you can do to help lead development in the right direction.

Once we release Kray 2 we will also reveal new website, demo version and do some marketing along.

cheers!

[jaxtone]

I just ordered and payed for KRAY! Now tell me how come I don´t get instant access to the software download? I need it now!

[jure]

I just ordered and payed for KRAY! Now tell me how come I don´t get instant access to the software download? I need it now!

Because Grzegorz will personaly sign off your copy and deliver it to you. How about that for a customer service?

[dballesg_forum]

I just ordered and payed for KRAY! Now tell me how come I don´t get instant access to the software download? I need it now!

Because Grzegorz will personaly sign off your copy and deliver it to you. How about that for a customer service?

Then I must protest, he didn't made that with mine

[jure]

I just ordered and payed for KRAY! Now tell me how come I don´t get instant access to the software download? I need it now!

Because Grzegorz will personaly sign off your copy and deliver it to you. How about that for a customer service?

Then I must protest, he didn't made that with mine

You didn't complain enough.

[geo_n]

Old LW will definitely stay supported at least untill CORE replaces it in all aspects. About renderpasses: please post your ideas to feature request forum. This is the best thing you can do to help lead development in the right direction.

Once we release Kray 2 we will also reveal new website, demo version and do some marketing along.

cheers!

I use a very handy script for max that overrides the scene temporarily to get common passes.
http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/quick-passes
If more complex passes the standard renderpassmanager of max is ok.

Even in a complex scene where an object goes behind, infront, off camera, its so easy to just pick an object, set the quickpass script to render a pass sent to network backburner.
I overrides the scene I guess and reverts back. It is similar to janus or passport I think. I was thinking of getting shadermiester but like dpont I think its node based and not really a renderpassmanager.